In 2012 Nilesh was diagnosed with Hodgkin Lymphoma, when receiving chemotherapy, he had a cardiac arrest and stopped breathing. He sustained damage to his brain nerves and has very little long term memory and extremely short term memory.
Headway began supporting Nilesh and his family when he was still in hospital.
"The only outside interaction Nilesh gets is through Headway. He is extremely happy when he sees and remembers the staff and members. His behaviour changes and in a way it has made him more relaxed and social with people”
Nilesh would usually attended our Day Service at Headway House, so when we went into lockdown his routine changed dramatically. Instead he was at home, as were his two young daughters.
In April 2020 we had to act quickly and began to send out fortnightly activity packs to members.
Each packed included games and activities focused on developing cognitive skills, as well as links to activities members could enjoy online as well as easy to follow recipes and quizzes.
The packs have helped Nilesh and his family do things together as a family and have kept him busy at a time when his usual day to day routine was severely disrupted.
For our family Headway has been absolutely brilliant, from information to support and even helping the children understand his injury.
When at Headway House, Nilesh would enjoy spending time socialising with friends and in the woodwork room.
During lockdown he has been a regular attendee at many of our Digital Day Centre sessions, but the one he enjoyed the most was ‘Hungry for Headway’.
We ran six weeks of our cook-a-long session where members received simple recipes to help them build confidence in the kitchen. Members joined by Zoom and support worker Ant lead the sessions from Headway’s kitchen. Together we baked brownies, Halloween truffles, bonfire night apple fritters, banana loaf, festive flapjack and merry mince biscuits!
“The digital sessions have been really well balanced and something we could all do as a family during lockdown” says Nilesh’s wife.
